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The Vanderbilt Owen Graduate School of Management is putting more intellectual power into its already outstanding faculty, by welcoming six new researchers and teachers to the school.
“These new additions complement and supplement our incredible faculty,” said Jim Bradford, dean of the Owen School. “This is a smart investment in the quality and future of Owen.”
The new faculty members are Dawn Iacobucci, Steven Posavac, Jacob Sagi, Timothy Gardner, Nicole Thorne Jenkins and Alexei Ovtchinnikov.
Iacobucci will be the first E. Bronson Ingram Professor of Marketing. She has spent the last three years at the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania, where she was the John Pomerantz Professor of Marketing. A noted teacher and researcher, Iaobucci was a tenured marketing professor at the Kellogg School of Business at Northwestern prior to joining Wharton in 2004. She received her Ph.D. from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.
“Dawn will lead our now outstanding marketing department to new heights,” said Bradford.
Posavac will join the Owen School as an associate professor of marketing. He comes from Rochester University where he held the rank of tenured associate professor and associate dean. Posavac is an expert in the field of consumer judgment and decision processes, including advertising and persuasion. Posavac received his Ph.D. from the University of Utah.
Sagi joins the Owen finance group as a tenured associate professor of finance. He holds Ph.D.s in
physics and financial economics from the University of British Columbia. Sagi most recently taught at the University of California, Berkeley where he achieved national recognition for research of asset pricing in unforeseen conditions. Sagi will lead Owen’s program in real estate finance.
Gardner will be an associate professor in human and organizational performance. He joins Owen from Brigham Young University, considered one of the top human resources schools in the nation. Gardner is a renowned expert on strategic human resource management, including employee recruiting, 
selection and retention. His current research interests include labor market rivalry and the organizational impact of human resource systems. Gardner received his Ph.D. from Cornell University.
Thorne Jenkins joins the Owen School from Washington University in Saint Louis. She will be an
associate professor of accounting. Thorne Jenkins spent four years with PricewaterhouseCoopers prior to returning to school to obtain her Ph.D. in accounting from the University of Iowa. She is a leading authority on financial accounting and corporate governance and specializes in financial restatements, stock repurchase analysis and asset market pricing.
Ovtchinnikov joins Owen’s finance group from Virginia Tech. He is an expert in capital markets, corporate finance, financial
management, mergers and acquisitions and investment performance. Ovtchinnikov’s current research interests include regulation and mergers, board characteristics and the effect of market timing on firms’ cost of capital. He received his Ph.D. from .
“I believe these additions will dramatically and immediately advance our teaching mission, program relevance and research impact,” said Bradford.
The new faculty will start working at Owen this summer and begin teaching this fall.
The Vanderbilt Owen Graduate School of Management is ranked as a top institution by BusinessWeek, The Wall Street Journal, U.S. News & World Report, Financial Times and Forbes. For more news about Owen, visit www.owen.vanderbilt.edu.
Media Contact: Amy Wolf, (615) 322-NEWS
Amy.wolf@vanderbilt.edu